- The free ping-pong tables project finally is launched tomorrow. Rush to St Pancras!

- You have until Friday to enjoy the food festival @ the Old Spitalfields market – cooking demonstration and free tasting, yummmy!

- On Friday, the Design Museum goes mad for recycling and green art. You can even try electric bikes. All this listening to a fab percussionist!

- Visit the parliament!

- Why not celebrate the 60ies @ Carnaby Street?

- Time to revise your Picasso knowledge…

- London parks are getting festive too!

- Add a pinch of poetry… and learn about Keats’ life right in the house and gardens where he used to live…

- Summer school holidays are on! Struggling to come up with ideas to keep the kids busy? You’re gonna love O2: mini golf, water games, trampolines…

- Or initiate them to opera with this version of Mr Fox -  only a few pounds.

- Did you know a few falcons actually nest on the Modern’s Tate chimney? Here is a chance to learn more!

- Sushi AND fusion food? Count me in!

- oh, and I’ll have cherry granita for desert…

- Speaking of ice-cream, Ben and Jerry’s launch their music and sweet treats festival this week-end @ Clapham…

- How could you resist a designers’ market?

- Follow Time Out to discover the oldest parts of London…

- Opera, art, walks, a pinch of madness with the in-transit festival….

- Too hot? I know what you need: a water tournament!

You’ll find me having a mocktail with friends @ Vista, a bar on a roof with a view on Trafalgar Square… I’ll also be following my friend Celine, a street-art specialist, to discover some more in London!

What? You did not know lavender could survive the usually humid British weather? Ah, yes indeed. Remember the famous Yardley… and Crabtree and Evelyn, of course… Both use English lavender exclusively.

Do go and discover Mayfield Lavender Farm. Contrary to Cotswold Lavender, who do make you pay to step into the fields, this family faarm welcomes you warmly and even invites you to picnic under the big tree, right in the centre of the plantations… It only takes a few seconds to feel completely soothed by the smell and feel like walking barefoot, caressing the flowers with your fingertips.

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Around you, kids run and jump, as if drunk with the perfume. Bees dance around, butterflies do not even seem to know where to start.

Although you cannot pick your own flowers, you can get lovely bunches at the shop for £3.50 as well as lavender plants from £2.50, soaps, perfumed sachets for your drawers, essentiel oil and even… lavender fudge! A mini-cafe will provide fresh and hot drinks and… lavender cupcakes, of course.

Come and see life in purple! The flower season lasts until July 27th.

Croydon Lane
Banstead
SM7 3BE

Opening hours vary through the year. In June and July, the flowering season, open from 10.00 to 19.00
Entry is free.

The last few years, the park has done its best to seduce families again. Summer festivals, concerts in the summer, temporary exhibitions, free entry for kids… and even a great interactive covered play area where parents will gain at least an hour of peace no matter what the weather turns out to be.

Our favourite, the one that for us is worth every single penny of the ticket remains the tree topwalk. No way to beat this.

From afar, you only notice tree trunks.Come closer and you will glimpse rust-coloured pillars. Look up -  meet Xstrata (who the hell chose that name?), a walk that will take you 18 metres up (118 steps or a quick lift ride depending on your energy of the day) and which was built in 2008 by the same architects that did the London Eye.

Here you are, same level as the highest branches of those 200 years old chestnut trees… The kids love it. Engravings  at kids levels explain biodiversity, the role of seeds and birds. Afar, you can just make London profile, Wembley stadium and on good days even the gherkin. You’re right between the last leaves and the sky. A Peter pan feeling, freedom, everything seems possible…

You instinctively touch the limes, oaks leaves with a sudden tenderness for those green giants. Kids love it too, gasp at the height, and will afterwards look at the forest differently, slightly in awe. They had never quite understood how tall those trees were. Neither had you, for the matter. My 4 and 1/2 princess will ask to go round again, pleeeeaaaase. Imagine how beautiful it must be in winter, all frosty or even better snowy!

200 metres of promenade that one would really love to go further accross the park. Get back to earth? Sure, but we’ll keep stars twinkling in our eyes…

Kew gardens
Victoria Gate
Kew Road
Richmond
Surrey TW9 3AB

Fee: £13.50/adult, kids go free
If you come by car, choose a Sunday, parking in the street will be free. Do come early though, spaces go fast!

End of June is the best time too – the roses are in full bloom. Splendid notes of orange, pepper, vanilla are in the air. Some are double, shy, bright purple, freckled, others blousy and seem to be opening very slowly like The Little Prince’s one.

The gardens are narrow but go on for ever. Narrow paths serpent through them, a few benches, lovely statues, an arched tunnel coverel with white blooms…

The best place to read this summer’s romantic novel!

Rose Garden
Hyde Park
London W1

Free

A great escape to the countryside is to drive down to Mottisfont Abbey – what a fab collection of roses they have there! (a few pics here)

Just in front Kensington Palace is their sunken garden – strangely often unknown although it is adorable and free. With spring it gains such a range of vibrant colours! A soothing view and you’ll find benches on the promenade surrounding it.

To parallel the Enchanted Palace exhibition, the arches have been jewelled with wonderful iron lace, best enjoyed at sunset time…

Sunken Garden
Kensington palace
202 Cromwell Rd
London W8 4PX

Free

Pssst: to discover many more private gardens, don’t forget that June 12-13 is the Open garden Squares week-end! A few pics from last year this way.

My friend Melody found it for us. Hidden in a corner of Chinatown, you could actually walk past without noticing the colorful sign leading you to the first floor. Take the table near the window – lovely view one of the sculpted doors of the neighbourhood!White walls, modern, lots of light. Not your expected Chinese cafe. But do not worry, the menu certainly is exotic enough and we were the only two European looking sitting there. Everything is trasnlated in English of course and the staff is adorable and discreet.

You now get three different options:

o Bubble juice – fruit juice and tapioca pearls

o Bubble tea –fruit juice, black or green tea and tapioca pearls

o Bubble milk – that one’s new to me, flavoured milk and tapioca pearls

Even better, those can be served cold or hot. By 25 degrees, the choice was pretty obvious but I can’t wait for a rainy day as an excuse to go back and try the other version.

And 30 flavours to choose from! Watermelon, honey peach, coconut, kiwi, passionfruit, green apple…

Verdict : the mago bubble tea is very velvety and you could drinks liters of the red plum bubble juice. Somehow you could stay there all day. the drinks are served in sundays kind of glasses are certainly are the best I have tried so far.  Even the tapioca pearls are just the way they should be, chewy but not too much.

The menu also proposes a wide range of Eastern deserts I will need to come and taste -  this makes me so curious: soya milk with jelly? Tapioca pearls desert with syrup? Coconut jam? It looks straight out of a manga and even if you are not convinced, your minde switches on the I wonder how its tastes? mode…

Add to that the free wifi -  I’m surprised they don’t propose fidelity cards yet!

Candy Cafe
3 Macclesfield St
Chinatown
London
W1D 6AU

Bubble Milk: £3.55 to drink in, £3.40 to take away
Another address? Jen cafe, two streets away.

Take your packlunch to the other side of Westminster Bridge – where St Thomas Hospital and the Florence Nightingale museum are. There also hides a lovely garden – relaxing, quiet, very often empty, but with a splendid view on the Parliament.

The hospital bursar used to have his house here – it was all bombed during the war. In 1972, it was decided to keep it as an open space with this abstract fountain by Gabo.

Particularly enjoyable @ sunset time…

St Thomas’ Hospital
Lambeth Palace Road
South Bank, SE1 7EH

More secret gardens?
- The Phoenix garden, close to the Soho buzz
- The Kyoto Garden, soooo zen!

But the stories it could tell! You seee, in Victorian times, the biggest complex of warehouses was built here to welcome merchandises from the colonies: tea, coffee, spices… were brought from the ships to the buildings around or from the same buildings towards different ships and new destinations.Imagine the noise, the mix of languages, the sailors, the horses. Streets and yards were names logically: Cayenne Court, Tea Trade Wharf…

In the 20th century, the harbour proves too small for the increasing trade: new warehouses are built further east. The neighbourhood falls back into silence. It will have to wait for the 1980ies to be in fashion again: entrepreneurs invest in the now empty buildings and transform them in smart, expensive flats. Some overlook the Thames, have a great view on the bridge or the City… Others have kept their original windows – small ones which temper the view a little. Upmarket restaurants flourish along the Thames, the Design Museum is built.

From its historical past remain a few signs: names on the brick walls, a cobbled street, winches…

… and this:

These sky passages were used to roll barrels from the Butlers Wharf Building to the Cardamom one. These days, they belonged to the flats nearby and are used as extended balconies.

Suspended in time somehow.

On the meat and fish side, the works are dedicated to the key animals…

Each door is surmounted by semi-circular pannel inviting the visitor to step ahead…

The theme is even kept on the fruit and veg side, lemoms and grapes up to the ceilings!

Keep your eyes up for this last one, still pretty modern althouh it is more than a 100 years old, a colourful stained windows ceiling…

And if you feel like practising your French (sorry! Plenty of pictures, though), have a look here for…
- the Egyptian escalator…
- the sweet side of the food court…

Harrods
87–135 Brompton Road
Knightsbridge
London, SW1X 7XL

Damned, you really wanted to bring something back for your best friend who soooooooo loves London.

Ah, but your bank accound has considerably gone down in the last few days.

Why not stop at the Japanese chian Muji and get this City in a bag kit? Ideal for fashionistas, design lovers, kids, Xmas stockings and even your shelves.

Light, does not take much space and costs a mere £5.95. I have offered so many of those I actually should buy Muji actions -  they always prove a hit.

Also exists as Paris, barcelona, New-York and Italy sets.

Muji

My two favourite addresses for Muji in London (more on the website):
- les than a minute walk from Tottenham Court Rd tube station (perfect occasion to see its fab murals then enjoy the Phoenix secret garden)
- In Selfridge’s basement